Nakamura 'Not Unhappy' Despite Losing Candidates Warm-Up To Liang

GM Awonder Liang beat GM Hikaru Nakamura 6-4 in the Hikaru vs. Awonder Candidates Training Match held in the Saint Louis Chess Club on March 13-15, 2026. The players made two draws in classical chess, then Liang won 3-1 in rapid, before the final blitz section was tied 2-2. Nakamura's goal was to warm up for the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament, calling the match "good experience before we get into the big event, which will be happening in Cyprus next week."

• Last-Minute Candidates Prep For Nakamura
• Classical: Liang 1-1 Nakamura
• Rapid: Liang 3-1 Nakamura
• Blitz: Liang 2-2 Nakamura

Last-Minute Candidates Prep For Nakamura

It's now less than two weeks until the Candidates begins on March 29, with world number-two Nakamura entering as the favorite, at least on paper, to qualify for a world championship match later this year against reigning World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju.

The war in and around Iran has caused one female participant to question her participation.

🚨 HT EXCLUSIVE

Humpy likely to pull out of Candidates in Cyprus over Iran war safety concerns

"It just doesn't make any sense. It’s dangerous to travel anywhere near West Asia at this point when there’s so much tension and uncertainty."

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— Susan Ninan (@ninansusan) March 16, 2026

For now, however, there's no indication that the event will be moved or postponed, and assuming it does go ahead, Nakamura had one issue to deal with.

Going into the 14-round event he could easily be rusty, since he last played a public game of classical chess in the Washington Dulles Open in early November. That was part of the campaign to play the required number of games for Candidates qualification, but when it comes to top-level games against his colleagues the last was over nine months ago on June 6 against a fellow Candidate, GM Wei Yi, in Norway Chess 2025.    

Top players often arrange matches behind closed doors, but in this case Nakamura decided to play a public match against 22-year-old U.S. talent Liang, who recently crossed 2700 for the first time in his career. Nakamura explained:

He’s had many good results and he’s someone who’s trying to gain experience by playing against some top players. He’s playing against me, he’s playing a match, I believe, against Levon Aronian, as well as a match against Hans Niemann. 

Nakamura saw it as a win-win: Liang gains experience, while he gets to warm up for the Candidates, especially as it was possible to use the same time control for the classical games—two hours for 40 moves with no increment, and only then an increment of 30 seconds per move plus 30 minutes to the end of the game. The two classical games would be followed by a final day with four rapid games (15 minutes + 10 second/move) and four blitz (3+2).

The match was organized too late to register the games as FIDE-rated, so the players' ratings were left unchanged.  

Classical: Liang 1-1 Nakamura

"Of course these two games today and tomorrow are the priority for me," said Nakamura in his recap of the first classical game, where Liang chose to have the black pieces after winning a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

The game began as a Giuoco Piano but didn't stay quiet for long, with Nakamura commenting, "I want games that are sharp and complicated because in the Candidates my opponents are always going to be playing all-in."

I want games that are sharp and complicated because in the Candidates my opponents are always going to be playing all-in.

—Hikaru Nakamura

That was behind the decision to go for 21.b6!?, which Nakamura described as "an extremely double-edged move" and one he might not have played in a normal tournament game where he wasn't trying to test himself in complex positions. 

The move didn't really bring practical dividends, and later Nakamura admitted he was simply trying to trade off some pieces and make a draw.

Instead, he got to feel the stress of playing low on time without an increment, and said that "looming time pressure" was behind his decision to quickly play 29.Nxe5?! when 29.c4!, "simply creating massive chaos in the center with all pawns under attack," was much stronger. Liang gained a significant edge, but didn't follow through, with Nakamura putting it down to a lack of confidence.

Nakamura summed up:

A very, very interesting game. I do think in this game I took some liberties in the opening. I think going for this b6-move was definitely a questionable decision, but considering this was preparation for the Candidates it’s good to get a feel for what sort of risks you can take, what sort of risks you cannot take, and not to feel like you’re invincible. I don’t want to feel that I’m invincible going into the Candidates where I can do any old thing and it’ll all work out. So it’s a good warm-up, it’s good to get the senses sharp prior to the event. 

I don't want to feel that I'm invincible going into the Candidates!

—Hikaru Nakamura

The second classical game, where Liang had the white pieces, followed a similar pattern. Nakamura opened with the Classical Sicilian.

Hikaru Nakamura defends the Sicilian Richter-Rauzer in game two of his Candidates training match against Awonder Liang!https://t.co/VpYa9KpkTI pic.twitter.com/J0wIkSG8Y0

— chess24 (@chess24com) March 14, 2026

Liang asked Nakamura in the post-mortem if he'd ever played it before, which the "veteran" described as, "A classic way of making me feel immensely old!"

Nakamura explained he'd played it many times in 2010-11, which his young opponent could easily be unaware of since he would only have been around eight years old.

Nakamura duly played fast and built up a big edge on the clock, but he gave it away with a 41-minute think over 13...Bc6!?. "I really want to play tactically," he said, adding of later taking on f6 with a pawn, "Of course I’m playing in the spirit of Robert James Fischer, the first American world champion, who loved to double up his pawns on the f-file."

In the play that followed Liang briefly had chances ("I thought this was a very high-level game—Awonder had one or two moments where he could have been better, but he wasn’t winning or anything overwhelming"), while Nakamura also looked close to taking over near the end.

So the main Candidates warm-up had ended in a tie, with Nakamura summarizing:

I wanted to play sharp, tactical games, try to improve the calculation, try to pay attention to time management, both these things were very, very critical in terms of the objectives of what I was aiming for. It was not about the result. I wasn’t looking to win or lose or anything along those lines. I simply was looking to play certain types of positions in these two training games before the big event and I think I accomplished what I was hoping for.

I think I accomplished what I was hoping for.

—Hikaru Nakamura 

The remaining eight games on the final day were more about having some fun and deciding a winner, though if there is a tie for first place after 14 rounds of the Candidates we could see 15+10 and 3+2 games played for the highest stakes in chess. 

Rapid: Liang 3-1 Nakamura

Liang was the first player to draw blood, more or less smoothly outplaying Nakamura with the black pieces after the opening 1.e4 e5 2.d3 appeared on the board (of which there would be more soon!). That was immediately balanced out by the same scenario playing out in the next game, where it was Nakamura who dominated with Black to level the scores. There was little in the way of flashy chess, with the world number-two dismissing those games as "very choppy" in his recap of the final day.

The third and fourth games, however, were much more memorable. Nakamura repeated his 1.e4 e5 2.d3 "surprise," but revealed he'd learned too late that it had been a total failure—Liang prepared the line for the recent The American Cup, where both GMs Fabiano Caruana and Levon Aronian had been known to try the offbeat opening.  

An early g4-push only brought pain, though Nakamura pointed out that he briefly had a chance to equalize except, "I think that honestly the position I reached in the game was too difficult to play with limited time."

That was so well played by Liang that Nakamura took it on the chin, but it was clear that the next game hurt even before he summed it up in the recap as, "A heartbreaking loss for me in the fourth and final rapid game of the match."

In another Sicilian, Nakamura went for 15...Bc6, explaining: "I decided to be extremely creative. He’s going to have to win my queen, or I’m going to sacrifice it... I assumed I was a little bit worse, but I thought it was definitely worth seeing how I could play this position."

In what followed Nakamura had some chances to be better and many moments when he could have held a fortress or forced a draw, but in the end he slipped to defeat.

Awonder Liang beats Hikaru Nakaura 3-1 in the rapid section of their Candidates training match! https://t.co/lxsVCJhggQ pic.twitter.com/fmKcdEWfrQ

— chess24 (@chess24com) March 15, 2026

Nakamura said of the loss, "I decided to push, push, push and things ended up not working out for me. And once again, credit goes to Awonder for finding some very, very good moves under the pressure."

Credit goes to Awonder for finding some very, very good moves under the pressure.

—Hikaru Nakamura

That left four games of blitz for Nakamura potentially to strike back.

Blitz: Liang 2-2 Nakamura

The final section started well for Nakamura, who smoothly won the first game with the white pieces in 30 moves. The second then seemed likely to end in a draw, until the world number-two thought his opponent had overlooked a tactic and played 32...Rxd4??, overlooking the killer response.

Nakamura saw the funny side of that loss and bounced back with a nice win, hunting down an unfortunate black knight.

That meant Nakamura went into the final game with a chance to level the scores at 5-5, but when he missed a tricky chance to grab a pawn in the opening things went downhill, and Liang grabbed a win to tie the blitz score and clinch a 6-4 match victory.

Nakamura said he wasn't concerned by the result of the match, particularly after trying some dubious openings. He pointed to something he'd learned: "What I will say on the positive side is that it’s very clear I’m going to need to manage my time better, especially when I get below 30 minutes in the Candidates."

His confidence seems high:

Overall, I thought my play was very sharp, very creative. Not unhappy with the result, but definitely not the way I would have liked the match to end. But nonetheless, it is good experience before we get into the big event, which will be happening in Cyprus next week!

Overall, I thought my play was very sharp, very creative.

—Hikaru Nakamura 

The Candidates Tournament starts with a bang on Sunday, March 29, when Nakamura will have the black pieces against Caruana.